, someone like michele flournoy or ash carter, then, of course, we would all be paying attention to mr. brennan who is the nominee to be director of central intelligence and who has himself a history of some controversy on both the heft and the right ironically. so if we could just talk about what the implications of this are, and i'm going to try and put these two questions together, actually, and to digress and explain this question a little better, many of us who work in foreign policy studied history because that's what draws you in. and in the old days polysci and ir were fields that weren't exactly embraced as they are now, and for those of us who did study history, a hot remember that all these inconsequential and rather interesting countries whether it was the czechoslovakias or malis of the time were the precursors to larger battles that could have been dealt with had they been dealt with early. i wonder if just sort of thinking through that prism where we see things going, but maybe take the nominees, and i'm going to just throw it open and see who grabs the mic first. tom. >